


The Opera Ghost

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Phantom of the Opera Fusion, M/M, based on the novel - not the musical, peter as the phantom of the opera, the opera ghost is a much nastier piece of work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22617157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: Noah is visited by the opera ghost when seeing his son play the violin,
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 16
Kudos: 156





	The Opera Ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DiscontentedWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/gifts).



> this is the book Phantom NOT the musical one, he's different and just extra enough for Peter. There is the possibility of Noah/Peter later but it's not there yet.

Noah stood at the railing of box 5 watching the young omega on the stage dancing in time to the music he played on his violin, his body twisting and turning and feet stamping as he juddered through the spiky music. "The viscomte proposed to him tonight," the opera ghost said from behind Noah. Noah knew better than to turn to look at him. If he did the box would be empty. It always was. "He thinks my reach does not extend to the rooftop, I have never corrected this mistake." The ghost paused. "He took the viscomte there that they might talk, I," Noah heard the rustle of fabric, heavy broadcloth used for the opera costumes. "I have never felt more of a voyeur but,"

"you wanted him to be safe," Noah said, "you do not fear the viscomte but you fear what he might do, without intent, that would,"

"Hurt him," the ghost finished the sentence.

Noah laughed. "Between us, we have raised a fine young man," the omega on the stage pivoted; He was using the violin to exorcise all the feelings swirling inside him that he felt were too big to let out.

"He is murdering that piece of music," the ghost said after a short pause, not wanting to face the truth of the statement that Noah had given him. "I taught him better than that."

Noah laughed, and together they stood in silence, the ghost in the shadows and watched the omega play the violin in the shadows of the Paris opera house stage.

\---

Noah Stilinski inherited the Paris Opera house just after his wife died. When he arrived, with his young omega son in tow, it was barely weeks after the terrible incident when the audience chandelier crashed into the stage killing the house soprano as she squawked like a frog. The newspapers reported that someone had been heard to loudly state "she is singing tonight to bring the house down." 

In the aftermath of the accident the owner had died and was not lamented, and his son took over the running of the opera house, something he had never wanted.

He had barely had the stage mended and the chandelier restrung with electric lights when he received the first letter. "if the manager, in any month, delay for more than a fortnight the payment of the allowance which he shall make to the Opera ghost, an allowance of one thousand francs a month, say twelve thousand francs a year, and Box Five on the grand tier shall be placed at the disposal of the Opera ghost for every performance.'

Noah had heard of the opera ghost. Everyone in Paris had. It was said that he lived in the catacombs and that he stole beautiful young ingenues and turned them into stars of the opera, many of whom called him their angel of music - but they never saw him. One young man claimed that he had been taken by boat to his subterranean lair which was decorated with treasures from the Louvre before La Terreur but no one believed him. 

What Noah knew for a fact was this: The opera ghost was real, and was almost certainly a flesh and blood man; the opera ghost was responsible for the collapse of the chandelier and the death of La Catherina that night; the opera ghost was also responsible for the mysterious death of the scene shifter Mr Buquet who had been heard to dismiss the ghost publically; that the opera ghost was almost certainly responsible for the death of Noah's own father resulting in Noah inheriting the opera house - which Noah did not hold against him - and that the opera ghost was moving through the opera house by way of old tunnels and the Paris catacombs.

That first year, with Noah's omega son learning the ways of the opera with the singers and the carpenters and especially the corps de ballet - who were probably responsible for most of his vices - Noah did try to catch the ghost in his box - but he never saw him. He also never stopped Stiles, Noah's son, from sitting in the box during performances but if the box was sold the opera house was made known of his displeasure. No force in the opera house could keep Stiles out of the box. He brought chocolates that he would take from the girls who sold them in the lobby and would leave half for the ghost.

As a child Stiles was in love with the ghost, with the idea of him, walking through walls and emerging from mirrors to teach the chorus girls one by one in his lair under the opera house. Mme Martin may have taken over his primary education, with her own daughter and a few of the younger girls from the corps de ballet- girls who Noah was convinced got younger every year- but then Stiles declared he wished to learn the violin.

Learning the violin in an opera house was not as easy as it sounded. The orchestra was often too busy to give lessons and had homes away from the opera house unlike the corps de ballet or the opera chorus. Bringing in a tutor would cause an uproar because every violinist in every chair would complain that they had not been asked - even if they had - and weren't the inhouse orchestra good enough to teach him so Noah had to let him down. 

Then a few days later Stiles was found practising the fingering on a battered old violin that had not been in the orchestra's inventory, where it might have been refurbished and put back into use. He was sat amidst the costumers, cross-legged on a work table, as they chattered. "Where did you get the violin?" Noah asked him. He had no problem with Stiles learning, even if he was an omega and expected to give up everything for marriage - a marriage that would bring with it the Opera House when Noah died - because he loved his son utterly and completely. 

Stiles had smiled, with gaps still in his teeth and his hair cropped to his head, wearing an old shirt from the costumes like a dress with brightly coloured velvet pantaloons and Turkish slippers, looking like an imp and just as mischievous. "The ghost gave it to me."

And that was how it started.

When Noah asked about the ghost, tucking him into his bed in the apartment at the top of the opera house, Stiles would smile and tell him about candies and the books he let him read and how he had to keep his hand at the level of his eyes as he fell asleep.

And between productions time passed and Stiles started to ask for clothes that were his own and not belonging to the opera. When the horse, Cesare, that was trained to walk on the stage, vanished Stiles told his dad not to worry, looking up from pages of Paganini music, that the ghost would bring it back. And he did.

When the small dining table in their apartment collapsed and Stiles fixed it he smiled and said that the ghost had taught him.

When Noah had the conversation about being an omega and the expectations that came with it and the uncomfortable parts of that conversation for any father to have with his fourteen-year-old son, Stiles smiled and said that the corps de ballet had told him all about it but the ghost had corrected most of what they said.

When Noah had asked if the ghost had ever done anything inappropriate or touched Stiles when he didn't want to Stiles had laughed so hard that he fell from his bed. 

Between Noah and the ghost, Stiles grew up from a motherless urchin running amok in the fantasy land of the opera house into a recognised beauty who greeted the very stars of the Paris firmament to the show. 

And then there was the viscomte.

The Comtesse de Chagny, Mlle Hale, was a beautiful woman with light eyes and money to burn. She patronised stars of the opera changing with the season. She wore elegant bustle gowns in heavy silk and sent flowers to all of the performers. They fought for her attention and her purse and she enjoyed their bickering. She invited Stiles to parties that were the talk of Paris even though he could not attend without a chaperone. She sent him diamond bracelets and Stiles sent them back. Then one night she brought her brother and everything changed.

If Mlle de Comtesse was lavish and charming her brother was quiet and sullen. He sent flowers to the orchestra for the violinist and the orchestra kept them. Where Mlle de Comtesse made her intentions towards Stiles clear Mr de Viscomte was surly and would appear with flowers and then snarl and walk away.

Stiles said he was charming when he did speak, that he was shy and he listened. Mlle de Comtesse was determined that Stiles would be hers, she gave lavish parties and made huge gestures, but Mr de viscomte listened and wandered with Stiles about the guts of the opera house and Noah took to going to box 5 to do his accounts because more and more as Stiles spent time with the viscomte he felt alone in a way he had not before.

The opera ghost maintained the house as much as Noah did. He drove out the bad staff and fixed the things that went wrong and when he demanded that they perform his opera it was actually a good opera and they had nothing else to show that month. 

There were things that might have been overdramatic anywhere else but they lived in an opera house. 

And now he stood behind Noah, a dark shadow over his shoulder, as they watched Stiles sawing at the strings, his entire body twisting and writhing to the music on the darkened stage with a single lantern resting on a chair beside him.

"Did he say yes?" Noah asked the ghost.

The ghost didn't answer for a moment, but there was a sound of movement, like two hands in gloves clapping together. "There is a room where an iron tree stands surrounded by mirrors, it is a forest of steel and glass. It is the star of the opera house, the greatest thing Elias ever built. He put his enemies inside with a rope hanging from the tree. I showed it to Stiles, I showed him because he needed to understand what alphas are, so he would be safe, so he would know that those of us who love him have," he paused again, "precautions for those who might hurt him."

Noah laughed despite himself. The ghost was dangerous. He would and had killed. La Caterina had been murdered on stage when the chandelier came down and her father had been found dead in an alley with a ceramic mask on his face - one that sounded like the one that the ghost was supposed to wear. A carpenter who had hurt at least one of the corps de ballet that Noah knew about was found hanging from the rigging in what looked like a terrible accident. With others the trapdoors in the stages would open and cause them to fall, breaking limbs. The ghost was both protector and punisher in the walls of the opera house.

"That doesn't answer the question," Noah said, he had turned a blind eye to the ghost and his behaviour because he was kind to Stiles- he had been a friend to him when no one else had.

"I shall tell you what they said," there was a sigh, "Oh, to-night I gave you my soul and I am dead!" and the viscomte answered. "Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. THE ANGELS WEPT TONIGHT."

Noah's hands whitened around the rail he held. 

"We are losing our little boy," the ghost said sadly. "The viscomte loves him completely, and our boy loves him back. It is all that we could ask but yet," he put his gloved hand on Noah's shoulder in a reassuring gesture, "I really want to drag him to the bowels of the opera house and show him the iron and mirror forest that he might never leave."

Noah wanted to laugh but he understood completely. "Maybe we are not losing our boy but gaining another."

On the stage, Stiles brought his song to an end and there was a low clapping, the viscomte sat in the front row to see him perform and watched him with obvious delight.

"I gave him my ring," the ghost said, "so that he could send for me."

"We have raised a fine young man," Noah repeated, "now we must trust him." The viscomte went up to the stage and took Stiles' hands in his own, his own hands large enough to hold them and the violin and bow that Stiles still held, before kissing him on each cheek and Stiles smiled for him, unaware that he was being watched from the box.

"Hannibal opens in three nights," Noah said, "would you mind if I watched it with you? the way that Stiles always did." but the opera ghost was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> The iron tree is in the novel  
> the lines Peter repeats that Stiles and Derek said are from the novel, Christine and the ghost have this interaction and Raoul overhears.


End file.
